Page 34 of The Maid's Pregnancy Bombshell

Ares compressed his sculpted lips. ‘Well, I would very much like to say that I realised that the day I first met you, but it took a lot longer for me to work out what Ishouldbe doing...which turned out to be what Iwantedto do, so it wasn’t that big a stretch.’

‘I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.’

‘I’m less than proficient when it comes to expressing emotion, but I can learn!’ Ares hastened to assure her. ‘When you told me you loved me in Greece I didn’t know what to say, which was wrong of me. I should’ve said how happy I was with that gift of yours, shouldn’t I?’

‘You think being loved was...is a gift?’

Ares urged her back into their bedroom. ‘What do you think? Nobody has ever loved me before. I’m not the world’s most loveable male—’

‘Yes, you are. You’reveryloveable,’ Alana told him chokily.

‘You’re not allowed to cry when I tell you that I love you,’ Ares warned her. ‘It can’t be the right reaction, surely?’

‘You love me?’ Alana fought to keep her voice level and not bounce round the room like a maniac in celebration and gratitude.

‘Don’t you know that? I thought you would have already worked that out for yourself and that you were telling me first to make me brave enough to say it back,’ Ares contended in some surprise at such ignorance. ‘I only realised when you told me that you were pregnant and Ilikedthe idea. But I should’ve guessed in Athens because you were such a tower of strength there in that Sarris palace that I... I just adored you for that—’

‘Did you?’ Her voice was small but her heart was swelling like a dawn chorus inside her chest. ‘I love you so much, Ares.’

‘I don’t know why though. That worries me. You’re everything I’m not. Open and sunny and free and I love all that about you, but it only reminds me that I’m older and set in my ways and kind of boring beside a woman like you—’

Alana’s hands framed his high cheekbones, green eyes alight. ‘You arenotboring—’

‘Even when I’m droning on about algorithms?’

‘You leave me behind sometimes, but I’m not bored,’ she declared with confidence. ‘You fascinate me. You did from the first. I fancied you something rotten from the minute I first saw you at the hotel. I know you didn’t notice me then, but that’s all right. You’re not the type of guy who perves on lowly employees and I’m glad you’re not. I thought you looked like a warrior angel.’

Ares dealt her a slashing, almost boyish grin. ‘Oh, I picked up on that when you were ill and I was... I was mesmerised by you seeing me like that. All that emotion just shining out of you. You were so tempting and I tried really hard not to take advantage of you and then Idid...and it was horrible walking away again after being with you. In fact, that week I left you alone in Abu Dhabi was one of the worst of my life,’ he confided, serious again. ‘I wanted so badly to still be with you but I thought it would be the wrong thing to do for you. You deserved more than I believed I could ever give you. You were so young and bright and full of life and I was scared I would dim that light of yours, because what did I have to offer aside from my wealth?’

Her eyes stung. ‘I didn’t understand that that’s how you felt and thought.’

‘But you still gave me your heart and wanted my baby and that was...that was amazingly generous of you,’ Ares intoned huskily. ‘You don’t care about my background. You love me in spite of it. You forgive my mistakes. You even make excuses for me when I get stuff wrong—’

‘Yes, you really do love me,’ Alana concluded with a misty smile, holding back the tears lest they freak him out.

‘Madly, fiercely,for ever,’ Ares stressed. ‘I need to know you’re planning on staying married to me until the day I die because I’d go crazy without you in my life. I’m sorry I was clumsy when I saw you got up in that outfit you wore this evening. I didn’t intend to hurt your feelings. I hate hurting you. I love it when you’re happy. I lovemakingyou happy.’

‘I’m never going to leave you...but you do know you’ll now have to celebrate Christmas and Valentine’s Day and all those sorts of occasions. I’m a sucker for all that sentimental stuff and I want a dog and maybe a cat too,’ she warned him anxiously.

‘I’ll cope,’ Ares assured her with a wide smile, his lean bronzed features more relaxed than she had ever seen. ‘What I couldn’t cope with is being without you. You’re more important to me than anything else in this world.’

Alana could feel herself standing as tall as a skyscraper. He was hers and far more hers than she had ever dared to dream. She tugged at his tie and he got the message fast. Off came the business suit, the gold cufflinks, the shirt. He lifted her up and kissed her with hungry urgency, telling her how much loved her, how he couldn’t wait for their daughter to arrive. Indeed, now that he was finally talking to her, he was talking too much and she hushed him, which made him laugh. They repossessed each other slowly, both feeling so much more than ever before and no longer hiding it.

‘I love you, Ares,’ she mumbled drowsily. ‘Goodness, we never had dinner.’

‘We’ll go down and find something when we feel like getting up, and that won’t be any time soon,’ Ares forecast, holding her close, simply enjoying that moment of perfect peace with her in his arms, safe and secure and his. He labelled what he was feeling as happiness and felt that he was becoming an emotional man. Once he had believed that that was dangerous, but it no longer bothered him because all that truly mattered was that Alana be happy with him. And she was.

Five years later

Alana tucked her daughter, Clio, into bed in the Sarris home in Athens. Her little brother, Lykos, was still snug in his toddler bed at the age of two. Both children had inherited their father’s silvery hair and their mother’s green eyes. In spite of a father as driven to work and succeed as Ares, they were remarkably easy to handle, even of temper and relaxed. Ares claimed that that was his calm nature coming out in their genes, but Alana thought it was hers.

It was their fifth wedding anniversary, but it wasn’t the same date as their original civil marriage. While Alana was still pregnant with Clio, Ares had suggested that they hold a blessings ceremony and that was now the date they honoured. The ceremony had taken place at the same hotel where Enzo and Skye had enjoyed their nuptials because that was, after all, where Ares and Alana had first properly met. In truth that blessings celebration had borne a closer resemblance to a second wedding in which Alana, finally, got to wear a bridal gown and her sisters and her triplet niece, Gianna, got to dress up as bridesmaids. Skye’s boys, Luka and Gaetano, had been far too active at the age of three to be entrusted with the role of pageboys and Enzo and their nanny had spent much of the day trying to keep them in control.

That very same night, Ares had dragged Alana down to that lake front and done what he had admitted he had wanted to do that first night when she’d asked him to marry her. He had tugged her into a passionate clinch on the beach before racing them both at an indecent pace to their room to celebrate in privacy.

Those days of emotional and physical restraint that Ares had once imposed on himself were now far behind them, Alana reflected happily. Their children had taught Ares how to relax. Add in a rescue puppy called Loopy and a black tomcat called Misha and theirs had become a busy household. They spent most of the week in London and weekends in the country or visiting Skye and Enzo abroad.

Alana had chosen to finally tell her sister about her stepfather’s gambling debts. She had told Enzo first to get his advice and he had reckoned that Skye had moved on enough from the past to handle the revelation that their stepfather had been imperfect. Sharing that secret had allowed the sisters to return to their close relationship and now it was Alana rather than Ares chatting on the phone late at night, to her sibling when their children were in bed.

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